Strange New World
by Drucilla
Summary: Agent Jones discovers a new and exciting realm of possibilities. For International Slash Day (Jul 1)


Agent Jones didn't understand what he was doing here. Orders had come down from the highest level for him and Brown, orders to track down Smith, find him and delete him. Brown and Jones, between themselves, had decided to find Smith and try and understand what was happening to him. It seemed that nothing had been sure as to just how beneficial Smith's exploits would be in the long run, but the Mainframe had written off the experiment as too dangerous. It made a certain amount of sense. Look what had happened to the program now known as the Oracle. They had decided to report Smith, to force him in for deletion when they had understood what had happened to him. They rationalized that with understanding came the ability to prevent future occurrences. Unfortunately the only one who seemed to understand what was happening to Smith was Smith himself. Brown and Jones were merely confused.  
  
Confused because they didn't have any more of an idea what had happened to Smith than Smith himself (itself?) did. They knew they were evolving... all Agent programs evolved. When they reached a certain level they were destroyed, and the component parts were recycled to create the next generation of Agent programs. Like any other, they went through their own regimen of upgrades, beta tests, and eventually obsolescence. Deletion and recompliation were facts of life. It was an almost Darwinian existence, and one that Brown and Jones were perfectly content to live out. They had even thought that Smith, as advanced and as tangential as he had become, was content to live out his existence under the threat of destruction. Now... everything was different, somehow. Everything was strange.  
  
They were sitting in a bar, in uniform although without their earpieces and sunglasses, in an effort to make them appear more human. According to Solace they were performing the social ritual known as 'picking up a girl.' Jones didn't understand it. None of the women were terribly attractive, and he didn't quite comprehend the reasons or explanations behind the nebulous concept of attraction to women anyway. Brown seemed to be content to sit and drink (or pretend to drink) and make polite conversation. He found the existential questions fascinating. Another sign of individuality, and one that Jones was reluctant to indulge in.  
  
"Explain this to me again," Jones said finally, when there was a lull in conversation. "Give me an example. Why is Solace physically attractive?"  
  
Brown looked as though he might say something, which Jones thought rather interesting, but then he thought better of it. In the end it was Smith who had to speak up, grudgingly, but with what Jones would have called pride. "Her hair is soft to the touch, of a very fine texture... her eyes are striking, and in certain lights... most commonly sunlight... they have a gem-like quality..."  
  
Solace blushed. Jones found this fascinating, too... he had never understood human tendencies to be embarrassed by praise.   
  
"Her voice is quiet and pleasing, no doubt an effect of her musical training, which also gives her a very fine singing voice. She smiles readily and gives a general impression of happiness, which is an attractive quality in..."  
  
"I'm... going to go get another round..." she stood up, bright pink.   
  
"But the conversation was just getting interesting..."   
  
Everyone stared at Brown.  
  
"What? Was my attempt at humor inappropriate?"  
  
Solace just shook her head. "Another Long Island Tea..." Smith nodded... "Stochli and tonic..." she looked over at Jones, who shrugged.  
  
"I will try a bloody Mary... although I don't understand these names..."  
  
Smith, possibly in order to forestall a query from Jones on the arcane practice of naming drinks, or maybe out of a previously unforseen sense of humor, started up again. "... Her hands are small and delicate, and through her dancing (which is excellent) she has developed..."  
  
Solace laughed. "I'm going, I'm going, just... stop describing me."   
  
Smith looked positively smug as Solace hastened away to the bar. Brown and Jones exchanged confused looks, which they'd been doing for most of the night. As if trying to understand the concept of being attracted to another person wasn't hard enough, the exchanges between Solace and Smith were getting more and more obscure. Comments which should have been, by most human societal standards, innocuous, received embarrassed and blushing reactions. And other comments which should have been ribald or inflammatory received nothing but a calm word in response. It wasn't just Solace... Smith was reacting all out of proportion to his initial programming as well. Nothing was as it should be, with him. It hadn't been for a while.  
  
Jones shook his head slightly as Solace returned with the drinks. There was no point in lingering too long on Smith's little quirks of behavior, not unless it gave him some new insight. Which it hadn't. "I still don't understand..." he returned to the previous topic of conversation. "Give me a practical example."  
  
Solace handed out the drinks, sat down, looked thoughtful. "Okay..." she said finally. "You see that girl over there? The brunette with the light blue sweater?"  
  
Jones nodded.  
  
"Yes," said Brown slowly.  
  
"Is she attractive?"  
  
Brown and Jones exchanged a look and a shrug and turned back to Solace with identical looks of almost absent-minded disinterest.   
  
"Okay, I guess not. How about that blonde over there, red shirt, black sweater and pants. Is she attractive?"  
  
Smith seemed to be finding the whole thing grimly amusing. He sipped at his drink, looking at the woman in question. "I suppose..." he said finally. Jones and Brown stared at him as though something in his face would tell them the right answer. Solace whacked him lightly on the arm.  
  
"Not you, silly. Them. Brown, is she attractive?"  
  
"I..." the Agent started, and trailed off.   
  
"Jones?"  
  
Jones merely shrugged. He didn't care one way or the other about the woman except that she seemed to be the key to figuring out what had happened to Smith. And even that wasn't certain. Other than that, she held no interest for him.  
  
"Okay, the girl over there in the jeans and blue tank top..."  
  
Shrug.  
  
"Over there, black blouse, white jeans..."  
  
Shrug.   
  
"The woman in the red dress..." Solace frowned at her, trying to figure out if someone had resurrected one of Mouse's old programs.  
  
Shrug. "I guess she's attractive..." Brown said finally. Solace threw her hands up into the air in a gesture of unmistakable exasperation.   
  
"Well, finally, we got somewhere! Jones, isn't there anyone in this bar you find attractive? At all?"  
  
Jones thought about it. He looked around the bar at all of the myriad women, expecting to feel something. He ran his internal diagnostic programs, wondering if there was a malfunction. Nothing seemed to be wrong... was there something going awry that his internal sensors couldn't detect or compensate for? It seemed unlikely. But Smith... even Brown had grudgingly admitted that some of the women in the bar were attractive. Perhaps, Jones thought then, because he was more attracted to the type of women that Solace represented than to the overall sort in the bar. It would explain a few things. But it didn't solve Jones' problem. He sighed and looked around the bar again.  
  
"There..."   
  
"The woman in the red dress?" Solace blinked at him, confused.  
  
"No, behind her..."  
  
"The chick in the blue jeans and..."  
  
"No, next to her..."  
  
Solace blinked again. The other two Agents looked where he had been indicating, shrugged. Solace just kept staring and blinking. "That guy in the grotty sweater and jeans."  
  
"Yes."  
  
"You find him attractive."  
  
Jones shrugged. "Yes."  
  
Solace stared at him, utterly bewildered. "You're gay."  
  
Internal diagnostic check. Everything functioned correctly. "Yes."  
  
"A gay computer program."  
  
Smith and Brown looked oddly at Solace. Jones shrugged again. "It is within the normal parameters for 10% of the human population we are designed to imitate, according to the average..."  
  
"No, but, you're a homosexual computer program."  
  
Smith looked a little annoyed that she kept repeating that about the computers. Jones shrugged. "Yes."  
  
Solace dropped her head into her hands. "Why me?"  
  
Jones frowned at her. "I beg your pardon?"  
  
"Nothing..." Solace shook her head. "All right. All right, we'll run you through a gay bar and see if anyone picks you up... picks you out, I don't know. Huh. I don't know any gay bars offhand... there have to be some..."   
  
Solace went off into her own little realm of muttering as she wandered over to the ladies' room. Jones simply looked at Smith with eyebrows raised, as though he could explain what was going on. Smith simply shook his head.  
  
"No matter how evolved I become, there are still areas of human interaction that I do not understand. Solace says it is 'a guy thing.'"  
  
Brown and Jones shook their heads. Humans were such odd creatures.  
  
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There were an exceeding number of handsome men at the bar Solace's friend took him to. For the first time since he had been loaded Jones understood the expression 'eyes popping out of his head.' There was so much to look at, so many people. Solace was right, and Smith. It was hard to explain the concept of physical attraction, but once it was defined in a person's mind...  
  
Julian, at least, seemed to be deriving extensive amusement from Jones' experiences. His hand was over his mouth covering a small smile as the Agent stared around in circles at the people in the club. Fortunately Solace had agreed to the Agent wearing his customary suit, saying it would explain any strange behavior. Suddenly Jones was grateful for the precaution, and admiring of the young woman's foresight. He anticipated a number of faux pas tonight.  
  
"I'll get us something to drink..." Julian said, sotto voce. "Go sit at one of the tables, make yourself comfortable. It's probably going to be a long night."  
  
Jones nodded and moved over to a table in one of the corners so that Julian could procure some sort of refreshment and, more likely than not, laugh quietly to himself.   
  
Jones took the opportunity to look around at what Solace called the 'gay' bar. It amazed him that humans were so concerned with what they did behind their own walls, boundaries that they themselves had set as the limits to which a public could see. Apparently personal space was variable within human society, and applied only to certain things. As though it really mattered. It wasn't as though the future of the human race depended on a small percentage of their population copulating for procreation. The way the humans made and then violated their own rules fascinated Jones... and only served to further convince him that they were all thoroughly insane.   
  
And this segregation of recreational facilities was ludicrous. Jones shook his head, making a mental note as Julian returned with the drinks to file a report with the Mainframe when this experiment was concluded.   
  
"Jones! Take your coat off, stay a while."  
  
The Agent had actually moved to do so until it penetrated that the human was expressing a request through metaphor. "I do not appear..." what was the word. "Relaxed enough?"  
  
"You look like you're on some sort of surveillance job. You're never going to pick up a guy looking like that..." Julian took a sip of his drink, rolled his eyes, and muttered into the glass. "Not the kind of guy you'd want, anyway."  
  
"Am I supposed to be seeking a particular type of..."  
  
Julian laughed. "It's an expression, Jones. Although I don't think you have anything to worry about."  
  
Thoughts, images, streams of data scrolled through Jones' mind. It took him a couple of seconds before he determined what Julian was saying. "Oh."  
  
Julian shrugged. "Sol said you could pretty much take care of yourself. She's usually damn good at knowing about that kind of thing."  
  
Oh she was, was she? "Yes. I can."  
  
"Besides, if anyone tries anything here, the bouncers can deal with him, and you strike me as too smart to go home with anyone really dangerous."  
  
What would Smith have said? Oh yes. "Thank you for that vote of confidence."  
  
Julian glanced sideways at him. "I thought you government agents didn't have a sense of humor."  
  
"It is not regulation, no."  
  
Julian laughed. It took a second for Jones to realize he had said something that could be construed as amusing. Oh well. "From what I hear, none of you are strictly regulation."  
  
That would have gotten on Jones' nerves, if Jones had nerves. Instead he merely shrugged and took a sip of the drink Julian had brought for him, a beverage known as Jaegermeister. A quick scan had told him that the beverage had originally been made out of deer's blood... yet another bizarre quirk of human nature. This variant, though, seemed to have no animal products. And Julian was staring at him oddly.  
  
"What?"  
  
"Did you just... sip... the Jaegermeister?"  
  
Blink. "Yes."  
  
Julian made a face that the Agent supposed was meant to be exaggerated distaste. "You don't... sip Jaegermeister. That's why it comes in shots." And he promptly tossed back what looked like a double shot of the drink.   
  
"Oh." Jones mimicked Julian's gesture. It burned on the way down, and he would have sputtered had he been a human. As it was, he had to take a deep breath.   
  
"It's something you kind of have to get used to," Julian said, amused and a little concerned until he saw that the Agent wasn't badly affected. "You're just lucky Solace hasn't challenged you to shot-for-shot yet."  
  
Jones arched an eyebrow. He hadn't thought it was her sort of drink. "She drinks this ..." Pause, search for the right word. "Stuff?"  
  
Julian nodded. "All the time. She actually enjoys it, believe it or not. Which is odd, because otherwise her favorite alcoholic beverages are the fruity ones... Curacao, Malibu Pineapple and Coconut, that sort of thing. But she really likes Jaegermeister."  
  
Jones frowned into his drink. "Hmm."  
  
"I'm a beer man, myself." Julian signaled over the waitress, who took his order for something called a Killian's uncomplainingly. "Not much for the harder alcohol. But then again I also don't usually drink to get rip-roaring drunk, so..."  
  
Jones shook his head. That was another thing he didn't understand. "Why do..." he barely stopped himself in time. "People feel the need to imbibe excessive amounts of alcohol in order to impair their thinking and memory when they are fully cognizant of the fact that it may lead to injury, distress, or death, and will lead to feeling ill the next morning?"  
  
Julian shrugged. Unlike the rest of the humans (even Solace) he seemed to have no difficulty following the Agent's speech patterns. "I don't know. People do a lot of stupid things, not all of them needing alcohol. They lie to each other, cheat, steal, corrupt, drink, do drugs, make more drugs when those don't work..." he rattled off several more, and Jones stared at him.  
  
"And this does not make you upset?" He'd found that Solace became depressed when she talked extensively about the problems inherent in the human race.  
  
Julian only shrugged. "I can't afford to get upset because human beings are stupid. I'm a lawyer, it's my job to help deal with stupid humans when they become more than they can handle. I see a lot of nastiness in my profession."  
  
Criminal law. Jones could understand that. "Ah."  
  
Julian shrugged again, taking a long drink in his beer. Jones took the opportunity to stare, to study the man. All his body responses indicated that he was indeed upset by the subject, deeply so. But he didn't appear to want to talk about it to Jones. Which the Agent could understand as a natural human reaction, Jones being a relative stranger. But he did not understand why the man persisted on putting up a brave front... why he did not just admit that he didn't want to talk about such things, and leave it at that. Jones frowned, annoyed without really understanding why.   
  
"Which, none of that's neither here nor there." Julian shrugged it off, changing subjects as rapidly as an Agent changed bodies, or so Solace had predicted. "We're here to find you a date. So, who do you like?"  
  
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"Relax, Jones. You look like a nine-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs."  
  
Jones didn't understand the statement at all.  
  
"Explain to me again how exactly this happened?" Brown wanted to know. In the back corner of the room Smith was leaning against the wall with his arms folded over his chest and a blatant smirk on his face. Apparently (at least according to Solace) he had seen this coming for a long time and had had a bet with himself over whether or not it would actually play out as he had anticipated. Solace herself had sort of anticipated such an eventuality, although she apparently hadn't thought it as likely as Smith.   
  
"We arrived at the bar. Julian purchased drinks..." Jones proceeded to go on a detail by detail recitation of the exact events of the evening that both Smith and Brown took in dutifully. Solace seemed not to be paying attention, but Jones had learned the hard way that she had the odd habit of picking up details without actually seeming to hear them. Probably something to do with being a writer for a magazine.   
  
"So all of that effort was for nothing," Brown said then. Jones started to agree with him, stopped, and paused.   
  
"Perhaps not. If, after all, we had not gone to that effort, we would not have made the discoveries that we did. But it is true that the desired effect was not achieved."  
  
"Still, progress has been made."  
  
Solace and Smith threw each other a look that made the two Agents uncomfortable. Since Smith had been exiled... well, that was entirely Smith's problem now, whatever burgeoning emotions might be overcoming him. And it was Brown and Jones' problem to see that it didn't happen to them. This affair with Julian would ensure it.   
  
The only problem was that the affair with Julian also made Jones extremely nervous. This whole thing with Solace, despite Smith's insistence on blaming the Resistance member Neo, was entirely the fault of him and Solace and no one else. And now Jones and Brown were following the exact same path, voluntarily. The only thing in their favor was that they were aware of the pitfalls, and could theoretically avoid them. But now Jones wasn't so sure.  
  
What he wasn't telling Brown, and what he would never have told Smith even under penalty of deletion, was that he had felt some strange sensation last night. An overwhelming impulse that he had fought assiduously up until the very end, when Julian had pressed his lips to his mouth and given him a gentle kiss goodnight. The urge to simply relax, to allow things to take their course, to melt into the other man's arms and spill all the secrets of the Matrix. He had felt the need to do something, anything to ensure the other man's happiness. With him.   
  
Had this been what Smith was feeling all the time? Was this why he and Solace were even now giving Jones measuring looks? Or was it all in what passed for the computer program's imagination, a subtle glitch in processing and logic.   
  
"So when's the next date?" Solace asked, but really the other two wanted to know as well. She had that look on her face, that shy and knowing smile. Julian might have already told her, Jones thought suddenly. He wondered why it hadn't occurred to him before.  
  
"In two evening's time. A dinner at some restaurant he knows, La Tomate..."  
  
She nodded. "I know it."  
  
"And afterwards he says he has something planned. But he will not tell me." Jones was frustrated, and confused. Smith was smirking, which didn't help matters any.  
  
"Well, that's rather cute." Solace smiled.  
  
"Cute?"   
  
She chuckled, nodded. "A surprise that one partner thinks the other will enjoy is usually considered cute and endearing. I would have thought you'd've known that," she teased. "You should have done your homework."  
  
Jones absolutely refused to take offense. "I see..."  
  
Brown said nothing.  
  
".... So what am I to expect, then?"   
  
Solace laughed. "Oh no. I think I know what Julian's got planned, and I'm not going to spoil a thing. You're just going to have to see for yourself."  
  
Jones directed a glance at Smith. Perhaps an appeal to...  
  
"While I do not know Mr. Rawlins' intent as clearly as Solace believes she does, I will not spoil the surprise for you either. You'll have to find someone else."  
  
"Brown?"  
  
Brown shrugged. "I have no idea."  
  
Jones sighed. He hated going into any situation blind, which was why he had always been working with Smith and Brown. Now he was not only going into the situation blind, but without any sort of backup or support. Not to mention that the situation itself would have made him uncomfortable if he had had a veritable army of Agents at his beck and call.   
  
And then, again, with that eerie perception that she seemed to display at the oddest moments, Solace reached out to touch his shoulder and get his attention. "You've got those earpiece things, and one of us will be with Brown at all times. You can contact him, and we'll all come and get you if things get uncomfortable for you. Okay?"  
  
Her blue-green gaze was almost hypnotic. When, he wondered, did humans acquire this ability to entrance Agents so easily? Julian had performed the exact same trick last night. Jones could only nod.   
  
"Okay."  
  
It wasn't until Brown's visored gaze met his own, though, that Jones felt he even had an ally in these new and uncharted waters. They stared at each other, and a wealth of information was exchanged in those stares before they nodded and looked away. At least he wouldn't be slipping into this strange new world entirely alone.   
  
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The lights were blinding, or maybe it just seemed so to him. The noise, the clatter of diners banging knives and forks against plates and wine glasses against water glasses seemed to ring in his ears. Everything was wavering in and out of focus, narrowing to a single point directly in front of him and then widening out to near 360-degree vision. The smells were overwhelming, sauces and pasta and meats and Italian sodas all whirling around his head and driving him mad. This was a mistake. He shouldn't have come. He turned to leave.  
  
"You're early..."   
  
Julian's smile slammed everything back into its proper proportion. Suddenly he could see and hear again. Jones nodded curtly, annoyed that he should have to be saved or protected by a human.   
  
"Come on... I had a table reserved."  
  
The maitre'd took down Julian's name and led them to a small, out of the way table in a corner of the restaurant. It did, however, have what might have been called a beautiful view of the gardens across the street. Jones wasn't sure if the view was lost on him or not; he wasn't sure if he wanted it to be. Across the table Julian cleared his throat, nudged Jones' arm with an outstretched menu when the Agent didn't respond. It took a couple seconds for Jones to realize what the man had meant.   
  
Julian smiled, slight and almost shy. "I recommend the mizithra pasta... it's really good." The statement seemed to be a continuation of an earlier speech that Jones had missed entirely. Was this what the whole evening was going to be like? He felt the sudden urge to contact Smith, to demand of the former Agent what was happening to him.   
  
"Is there something appropriate to a beginning gourmet?" he found himself staying instead.   
  
Julian thought for a second. "The sampler is actually quite good, and there's enough there to get a good idea of what you might like if you want... other than that, most of the dishes are the usual... fettucini alfredo, pasta marinara..."  
  
Jones nodded. When the waiter came by he selected a simple pasta marinara, deciding to err on the side of caution and keep the adventures out of the food choices for the evening. The one consolation seemed to be that Julian was as unsure as he was, neither of them looking at the other and reaching for glasses, napkins, extraneous such things often. Jones abruptly wished for the menus back so he would at least have something else to fiddle with.  
  
"Is this your first time?"   
  
He said it so abruptly that Jones nearly dropped his glass. Dammit. He had never been so nervous, so jumpy before. Even under fire from humans or other AI, exiles, he had always been perfectly calm and poised. He was programmed that way, it couldn't be any other way. So why was he so nervous now?  
  
And what did Julian mean anyway? His first date? His first time with another man? Either way, the answer was the same. "Yes."  
  
"Oh."  
  
More silence. More nervous fiddling with the various items on the table, the cuffs of his uniform.  
  
"... before this goes any further..."   
  
"I should warn you..."  
  
They looked at each other. Awkward moment; Jones wasn't sure what to do. "You go ahead."  
  
Julian nodded, swallowed. "Before this goes any further... are you ... 'out' as the saying goes, in the workplace?" He looked back down at his empty place. "Stupid saying. They need to come up with a different one, but nobody's been able to think of one yet..."  
  
"No..." In more ways than one, Jones thought. Was there a way to convey that? "The department discourages personal relationships of any kind."  
  
Julian stared. "Was that what you were going to warn me about?"  
  
Nod.  
  
"Ah." Pause. "And you never had a boyfriend in high school?"  
  
If only the man knew. He didn't even have a high school. "No..." Jones settled for the simplest answer possible. It was even the truth.  
  
"Ah."  
  
Julian smiled a little. He didn't look any less nervous than Jones felt, which was only a marginal relief. The Agent's concern, after all, was less to do with his date and more to do with the fact that he had a date at all. No amount of smiling, hand-holding, hugging, or kissing from Julian could fix that. And yet he was here because he wanted to be here, because he was looking forward to more of the same. And also because he was trying to find out what had caused Smith to deviate so far from the norm. Curiosity was almost as dangerous a sin as emotional attachment. So by being here, in the end, he was breaking all sorts of rules. And his thoughts were circling themselves like sharks in chummed waters.   
  
The food arrived. They busied themselves with it, grateful to have something to pay attention to other than each other, grateful for the distraction. Even so, their eyes flicked upwards to each other, averting automatically whenever their stares met. It amazed Jones how quickly he was able to fall into these courtship behaviors.   
  
"Is it good?"  
  
For one bizarre moment Jones thought Julian was being suggestive. The food. He was talking about the food.   
  
"Yes... quite good."  
  
Julian exhaled. Jones poked around at his food, wanting and waiting for something else to happen. All around them the music swirled, diners came and went, distractions galore. The world was starting to go in and out of focus again.  
  
Julian's hand slid hesitantly over his. Jones looked up. The other man was smiling shyly, nervous but having apparently found courage from somewhere. Or perhaps it was just the wine.  
  
"You might be more comfortable with those..." he reached out to pluck the sunglasses from Jones' face. "Off..."  
  
He started to open his mouth to protest. Started to say something as the second-to-last bastion and reminder of his Agent-hood was easily removed from him. It did feel a little easier with the glasses off, though, a little less as though he was betraying something deep and intrinsic that would come back to haunt him... both of them.... It felt a little more as though he could relax, and a knot that had started somewhere in his programming began to unkink itself.   
  
"Maybe you're right."  
  
Talk flowed easier then, and when they finally left the restaurant (hand in hand) Jones was feeling only faint traces of the strict imperative within him that forbade human contact any longer than necessary. Exile might come, or promotion. For tonight, though, he didn't care. 


End file.
